Chemical Weapons

[Red Phoenix]

Whilst I'm very skeptical about the nature of mass media, I'd be way, way, way more concerned with the totally unregulated, totally standard devoid blogs and websites which are virtually just platforms for people's misinformation and bias.

 

I'm not personally as concerned because those blogs/sites don't have anything like the influence that the mainstream media have. They do bug me too though, and I think it's important to try to find the middle ground between the two.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

They don't have the wide range of influence, that's true. However, you seem to get a lot of information from them or allow them to at least frame the debate for you. I don't think a middle ground is important. I think accuracy is more important. Unfortunately, the blogs and bizarre sites are behind even the mainstream media on that front.

[General Dryness]

So where are we at with this shit? Did the North Koreans do it or what?

[dennis tooth]

They don't have the wide range of influence, that's true. However, you seem to get a lot of information from them or allow them to at least frame the debate for you. I don't think a middle ground is important. I think accuracy is more important. Unfortunately, the blogs and bizarre sites are behind even the mainstream media on that front.

 

Three agencies, AP, Rueters and UPI dickhed, you're just a bag of plain ready salted wrong, thats all.

[dennis tooth]

So where are we at with this shit? Did the North Koreans do it or what?

Its pretty obvious mate just read the last three pages and all is revealed.

 

The silence is damning.

[ZonkoVille77]

Tooth, would it kill you to post the links to those sites/quotes? Fucking eye sore trying to read it on a forum. Ta

[dennis tooth]

Would it kill you to buy some glasses? Ta

[General Dryness]

Would it kill you to buy some glasses? Ta

 

You could try to make yourself a bit more user friendly Dennis.

 

On the plus side, it would make you look less mental.

[dennis tooth]

Im not looking for mates or to impress, I just do me, if I throw you a twenty note, dont whine that its crumpled.

O

[Red Phoenix]

They don't have the wide range of influence, that's true. However, you seem to get a lot of information from them or allow them to at least frame the debate for you. I don't think a middle ground is important. I think accuracy is more important. Unfortunately, the blogs and bizarre sites are behind even the mainstream media on that front.

 

You have me mixed up again, (which admittedly is partly down to me not explaining what I meant well enough.) I completely, 100% agree with you that accuracy is more important. It's what we're looking for when we start reading anything that any blog or site has an article about. It always frustrating to try and verify something you've seen stated as a fact, then find that it doesn't even make any sense and that time has been wasted. (and even worse when you just repeat it as fact, then get called out on it because you didn't check properly.) That's why I mentioned a middle ground, so that the bias from either side is minimal and we're left with mostly facts from the best people in that portion of the spectrum.

 

Just to add - thought this might be worth a read for anyone interested in the way media report things : http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

[Red Phoenix]

This is the reward Syria get for meeting another chemical weapons deadline :

 

 

Israeli warplanes have attacked a shipment of Russian missiles inside a Syrian government stronghold, officials say, a development that threatened to add another volatile layer to regional tensions from the Syrian civil war.

 

The revelation came as the government of President Bashar al-Assad met a key deadline in an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 and avoid international military action.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/israel-strikes-russian-weapons-syria

 

Fuck the Israeli government. Horrible, fascist scum. Fuck off to another planet with your hidden and illegal nuclear weapons, you Palestine destroying bastards.

[Red Phoenix]

Still waiting for the chemical weapons report, surprise surprise. They checked various sites, including Khan al Assal, and said the report would be ready by end of October. When asked at the end of October a spokesperson said it'd been put back to early December, and it now seems to be mid-December.

 

 

 

I don't think we'd have these types of 'delays' if the western 'powers' had attacks ready that depended on the findings of the reports. I still think it's a load of corrupt shit to be honest.

[Red Phoenix]

From the UN :

 

12 December 2013 – The United Nations team probing the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which in September found “clear and convincing evidence” of Sarin gas attacks against civilians, including children, in the Damascus area, today reported “credible information” that such weapons were used against soldiers and civilians in other parts of the country.

 

“The United Nations Mission collected credible information that corroborates the allegations that chemical weapons were used in Khan Al Asal on 19 March 2013 against soldiers and civilians,” according to the final report, which team leader Dr. Åke Sellström handed over to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at UN Headquarters in New York.

 

“However, the release of chemical weapons at the alleged site could not be independently verified in the absence of primary information on delivery systems and of environmental and biomedical samples collected and analysed under the chain of custody.”

 

The report concludes that “chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties” in Syria, and repeated the team’s earlier finding of “clear and convincing evidence” of chemical weapons use against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August 2013.

 

Since the allegations arose, the Government has acknowledged that it possessed chemical weapons, joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, and pledged their elimination. A Joint UN Mission with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was established and is overseeing the destruction of Syria’s stockpiles and production facilities.

 

“The use of chemical weapons is a grave violation of international law and an affront to our shared humanity,” Mr. Ban said on receiving the report. “We need to remain vigilant to ensure that these awful weapons are eliminated, not only in Syria, but everywhere.”

 

In all the cases the team, appointed before Syria acknowledged that it possessed such weapons, did not specify which party might have used the weapons in the nearly three-year old civil war between the Government and opposition fighters, since that was not part of its mandate.

 

It based its Ghouta findings on Sarin found in exploded surface-to-surface rockets at the site, environmental contamination by Sarin in the area where patients were affected, epidemiology of over 50 interviews given by survivors and health care workers, survivor intoxication by an organophosphorous compound, and blood and urine samples that were positive for Sarin.

 

In the case of Khan Al Asal, near Aleppo in the north of the country, the team based its findings on the epidemiology from witness statements of medical staff and military personnel participating in the rescue operation and on the documentation from the local health sector provided by Syria, Interviews with secondary exposed survivors that confirm symptoms of an organophosphorous intoxication.

 

It also noted that none of the parties denied the use of chemical weapons there and that the evaluation of the information provided by the Government as well as by the Governments of France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States indicated that chemical weapons were used.

 

In other cases the team reported evidence consistent with the probable use of chemical weapons in Jobar on 24 August, on a relatively small scale against soldiers but because of the absence of primary information on delivery systems and environmental samples collected and analysed under the chain of custody, it could not establish the link between the victims, the alleged event and the alleged site.

 

The mission collected evidence suggesting chemical weapons use in Saraqueb on 24 August 2013 on a small scale, also against civilians, in Ashrafiah Sahnaya on 25 August on a small scale against soldiers, but could not establish linkage for similar same reasons.

 

It could not corroborate the allegation that chemical weapons were used in Bahhariyeh on 22 August due to lack of blood samples, and in Sheik Maqsood on 13 April in the absence of further information.

 

“The United Nations Mission remains deeply concerned that chemical weapons were used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arabic Republic, which has added yet another dimension to the continued suffering of the Syrian people,” the report concluded.

 

Formally known as the Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic the team led by Dr. Sellström, a Swedish scientist, was established by Mr. Ban on 21 March and was assisted by experts from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the OPCW.

 

The Secretary-General will brief the General Assembly on the report in a closed session tomorrow afternoon. Following that briefing, the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Angela Kane; Head of the UN Mission, Professor Sellström; and the team leaders, Scott Cairns from the OPCW and Dr. Maurizio Barbeschi from WHO are expected to brief the press at Headquarters.

 

 

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46730&Cr=syria&Cr1=#.Uq4ezap6kSk

 

I'd guess that if they hadn't messed around for so long we might've been able to confirm months ago (while it was still possible to detect sarin or traces of it.) that the rebels have chemical weapons and that they've used them. Because they didn't though, it's now conveniently still a grey area.

 

Also note that now that it doesn't seem so one-sided, that it's become more possible that the rebels have possibly used chem weapons as well, the media have hardly made a noise about it. Maybe it's counter to the established narrative.

 

 

Just found this too which some of you might find worth a quick read : http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/15/saudia-arabia-iran-proxy-war-syria

[Rotpeter]

dennis trooth . . . I say.

[Coro]

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/09/seymour_hersh_obama_administration_nearly_lied_the_u_s_into_war_with_syria/

 

Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative journalist who broke the My Lai massacre and the abuses at Abu Ghraib, says in a new report for the London Review of Books (the New Yorker and the Washington Post both reportedly passed) that the Obama administration did not tell the whole truth while arguing for a military strike against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons.

Hersh accuses the Obama administration of cherry-picking its evidence and omitting key, contradictory facts. But the administration’s greatest sin, according to Hersh, was its failure to reveal its knowledge that an al Qaida-aligned group of Syrian rebels — the al-Nusra Front — had mastered the creation of sarin gas, the substance used in the chemical attack the administration cited as a cause for war. “When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect,” Hersh writes, “but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.”

[Red Phoenix]

From Media Lens :

 

 

 

'Trash Can' Flight Path

 

If a report from such an obviously biased source can merit wall-to-wall media coverage, how about a report on Syria's August 21, 2013 gas attacks by two authentically credible figures like Richard Lloyd and Theodore Postol?

 

Lloyd is a former United Nations weapons inspector who in two decades at Raytheon, a top military contractor, wrote two books on warhead design. He has written a critique of the Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile system for engineers and weapons designers. In March 2013, the New York Times noted that Lloyd 'has the credentials for a critique'.

 

Postol is a professor and national security expert in MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society. In 1995 he received the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2001 he received the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 'for uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses'. Postol has a proven track record in, for example, debunking Pentagon claims on the success of its Patriot missile system.

 

In September 2013, the New York Times described Lloyd and Postol as 'leading weapons experts'.

 

Their January 14 report titled, 'Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,' examines US government claims regarding the August 21 chemical weapons attacks in Damascus. The report finds that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from Syrian government positions, as claimed by the Obama administration.

 

Using mathematical projections about the likely force of the rocket – which has been variously described as 'a trash can on a stick' and 'a soup can' – Lloyd and Postol conclude that the device likely had a maximum range of 2 kilometres, or just more than 1.2 miles. The 'trash can' was not capable of flying the 6 miles from the centre of the Syrian government-controlled part of Damascus to the point of impact in the suburbs, as claimed by the US government, nor even the 3.6 miles from the edges of government-controlled territory. Lloyd and Postol comment in their report:

 

'This indicates that these munitions could not possibly have been fired at east Ghouta from the "heart" or the eastern edge of the Syrian Government controlled area depicted in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013.

 

'This faulty intelligence could have led to an unjustified US military action based on false intelligence.

 

'A proper vetting of the fact that the munition was of such short range would have led to a completely different assessment of the situation from the gathered data.'

 

Postol adds:

 

'I honestly have no idea what happened. My view when I started this process was that it couldn't be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I'm not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.'

 

Lloyd, who has carefully studied weapons capabilities in the Syrian conflict, rejects the claim that rebels are less capable of making these rockets than the Syrian military:

 

'The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons. I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government.'

 

Lloyd and Postol have made clear that they are not arguing that the rebels were behind the attack, but instead pointing to the flawed assessments behind US claims.

 

So how have the same media that gave so much coverage to the Qatari-commissioned report responded?

 

According to the Lexis media database (February 3, 2014), Lloyd and Postol's report has not been mentioned in any UK newspaper. Following a search of the Factiva database (January 28, 2014), the US political analyst David Peterson told us that the only major US newspapers to have covered the report are the New York Times and Miami Herald, with one mention each.

 

This near-total blanking of the report comes in the wake of a detailed analysis of the same chemical weapons attacks by renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books on December 19, 2013.

 

As we discussed in December, Hersh reported on his interviews with US intelligence and military personnel:

 

'I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration's assurances of Assad's responsibility a "ruse".'

 

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Hersh added: 'there are an awful lot of people in the government who just were really very, very upset with the way the information about the gas attack took place'.

 

Hersh's article has received one mention in the entire UK press, in the Daily Mail.

 

This, then, is more evidence indicating a prime mechanism of thought control in ostensibly democratic societies. Sources favourable to state-corporate power, however non-credible, are granted massive favourable coverage. Sources that challenge the required view of the same interests are simply ignored, with no explanations given by a media system that does not tolerate self-analysis or public interference in what is, after all, a business.

 

David Yelland explained:

 

'As a former Sun editor, I know newspapers are dictatorships... too often anyone who challenges the status quo is ejected from the group or sidelined. Indeed, many papers remain dictatorships: anyone who challenges the editor does not last long. This applies even more to proprietors.'

 

Elite proprietors and parent companies naturally select editors to represent the interests of elite power. Because the same interests run all major media outlets, it is no surprise that they flip as one, like a flock of starlings, towards favourable sources and away from unfavourable ones. The autocratic nature of the media system means that the public has no way to ask even the most basic questions about these decisions. We, for example, are largely dismissed as annoying malcontents.

 

While a number of national newspapers reported Yelland's comments, Lexis finds that, appropriately enough, not one of them mentioned his claim that 'many papers remain dictatorships'.

 

 

'Not Even Close To Reality' - Filtering Sources On The Syrian War

[dennis tooth]

The only evidence of weapons we have in the thread is Numero Nueve himself.

 

Hes gone quiet like someone just released crime statistics.

 

Silent as the gas that slips through his anal. I suppose its of no concern to him or his own personal harem of cocklickers on here.

 Some of them give really good head by all accounts so I suppose there is some justification for his lies and nonsense.

[Red Phoenix]

Yes. Total bullshit and bizarre shit from you. Again.

I'm not posting in the Israel thread about this again.

 

Thought this was interesting :

 

(Reuters) - Two cylinders reportedly seized by Syrian government troops in an area controlled by armed opposition groups contained deadly sarin, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council published on Monday.

 

Ban said that on June 14, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) United Nations Joint Mission overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical stockpile analyzed the contents of the cylinders.

 

"The Joint Mission confirmed that these contained sarin," said Ban's letter. The letter said the cylinders were "reportedly seized by the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Republic in August 2013 in an area reportedly under the control of armed opposition groups."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/07/us-syria-crisis-chemicalweapons-idUSKBN0FC1U420140707

 

 

It's a shame the US gov doesn't give a fuck about this either, they sure would do if it was the Assad "regime" : http://kurdistantribune.com/2014/doctors-confirm-isis-use-of-chemical-weapon-kobane/

[Red Phoenix]

No comment section for this article from The Guardian, probably because they knew that this would be called out instantly :

 

 

 

A year ago this month the prime minister recalled parliament from its summer recess after deciding that Britain should join with the US in launching strikes against Syria after its forces attacked a Damascus suburb with chemical weapons.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/lesson-syria-vote-iraq-cameron-analysis

 

Filthy propaganda rag.

[Red Phoenix]

Now, as I keep saying, all the intelligence agencies might be lying, the NGO reports might be brilliantly falsified, the UN might really be making it all up - they could all be working in cahoots - and I’ll go along with that if you’d just show something, anything, that is credible that the opposition had the ability to fire 56 fucking liters of sarin from inside the Syrian regime controlled areas – or inside their military instillation – from 140 and 330mm rockets. Sorry, but a video of some guy putting the fucking cylinders of a 50 year old 107mm rocket launcher on back to front – seems like he might be qualified to handle 56 liters of CW, inside multiple warheads - isn't going to cut it. You believe it if you like, rather than you than me, mate.

How about this?

 

Theodore Postol, a professor of technology and national security at MIT, reviewed the UN photos with a group of his colleagues and concluded that the large calibre rocket was an improvised munition that was very likely manufactured locally. He told me that it was ‘something you could produce in a modestly capable machine shop’. The rocket in the photos, he added, fails to match the specifications of a similar but smaller rocket known to be in the Syrian arsenal.

 

The New York Times, again relying on data in the UN report, also analysed the flight path of two of the spent rockets that were believed to have carried sarin, and concluded that the angle of descent ‘pointed directly’ to their being fired from a Syrian army base more than nine kilometres from the landing zone. Postol, who has served as the scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations in the Pentagon, said that the assertions in the Times and elsewhere ‘were not based on actual observations’.

 

He concluded that the flight path analyses in particular were, as he put it in an email, ‘totally nuts’ because a thorough study demonstrated that the range of the improvised rockets was ‘unlikely’ to be more than two kilometres. Postol and a colleague, Richard M. Lloyd, published an analysis two weeks after 21 August in which they correctly assessed that the rockets involved carried a far greater payload of sarin than previously estimated. The Times reported on that analysis at length, describing Postol and Lloyd as ‘leading weapons experts’. The pair’s later study about the rockets’ flight paths and range, which contradicted previous Times reporting, was emailed to the newspaper last week; it has so far gone unreported.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology report is here : https://wikispooks.com/w/images/8/88/Ghouta-Bad-Intelligence.pdf

 

Some quotes :

 

The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers

 

This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart” or the Eastern Edge of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Depicted in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013.

 

This faulty Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence.

 

A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data

 

Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.

 

If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Problems That Led to this Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a Future Policy Disaster Will Grow With Certainty.

 

From Ake Sellstrom, who's team made the Ghouta UN report :

 

We have seen problems – like you have seen others performing whatever studies on these rockets and we have consulted with experts, and if you simulate the flight path it seemed not to meet – may be indicated from the report – you may draw a conclusion from the report two kilometers could be a fair guess. I would assume, but it all depends, you have to sort of set some parameters which we do not know to what extent they were filled or with what they were filled with. We don’t know their weight or whatever, but two kilometers could be a fair guess.

The MIT report then says this, after quoting Sellstrom :

 

NOTE: Our calculations show that the exact weight of the munition is not an important determinant of its range.

 

So are you going to admit that you might have been wrong?

[Rico1304]

I'm no scientist, or ballistics expert but that last quote about weight...surely that's bollocks. Weight and the amount of thrust are surely massively important to range. Happy to be proved wrong of course.

[Red Phoenix]

I'm no scientist, or ballistics expert but that last quote about weight...surely that's bollocks. Weight and the amount of thrust are surely massively important to range. Happy to be proved wrong of course.

Yeah, thought that was odd as well, but from page 11 of the report :

 

 

The Range Does Not Change Drastically with Significant Changes in the Body Weight or Due to Uncertainties in the Aerodynamic Drag Coefficient.

and :

 

Its Range Is Dominated By the High Aerodynamic Drag from Its Body-Shape

[Rico1304]

Cheers

[Spy Bee]

Some interesting whistle blowing coming from OPCW: https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/major-revelation-from-opcw-whistleblower-jonathan-steele-speaking-to-the-bbc/

 

← Media Coverage of OPCW Whistleblower Revelations

 

“Major Revelation” from OPCW whistleblower: Jonathan Steele speaking to the BBC

Posted on October 27, 2019by timhayward

The following is a transcription of an interview given by Jonathan Steele (former Senior Middle East Correspondent for the Guardian) to Paul Henley, on the BBC World Service programme, Weekend, on 27 October 2019

Jonathan Steele: “I was in Brussels last week … I attended a briefing by a whistleblower from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He was one of the inspectors who was sent out to Douma in Syria in April last year to check into the allegations by the rebels that Syrian aeroplanes had dropped two canisters of chlorine gas, killing up to 43 people. He claims he was in charge of picking up the samples in the affected areas, and in neutral areas, to check whether there were chlorine derivatives there …

Paul Henley: And?

JS: … and he found that there was no difference. So it rather suggested there was no chemical gas attack, because in the buildings where the people allegedly died there was no extra chlorinated organic chemicals than in the normal streets elsewhere. And I put this to the OPCW for comment, and they haven’t yet replied. But it rather suggests that a lot of this was propaganda…

PH: Propaganda led by?

JS: … led by the rebel side to try and bring in American planes, which in fact did happen. American, British and French planes bombed Damascus a few days after these reports. And actually this is the second whistle blower to come forward. A few months ago there was a leaked report by the person who looked into the ballistics, as to whether these cylinders had been dropped by planes, looking at the damage of the building and the damage on the side of the cylinders. And he decided, concluded, that the higher probability was that these cylinders were placed on the ground, rather than from planes.

PH: This would be a major revelation…

JS: … it would be a major revelation …

PH: … given the number of people rubbishing the idea that these could have been fake videos at the time.

JS: Well, these two scientists, I think they’re non-political – they wouldn’t have been sent to Douma, if they’d had strong political views, by the OPCW. They want to speak to the Conference of the Member States in November, next month, and give their views, and be allowed to come forward publicly with their concerns. Because they’ve tried to raise them internally and been – they say they’ve been – suppressed, their views have been suppressed.

 

 

Not getting much coverage in MSM.